My husband has taken on a new mistress. He likes to stroke and pinch her lovingly at the breakfast table, right in front of his own wife and children.

Yes, my husband has gotten himself an internet and multimedia-enabled smartphone.

Not an iPhone, mind. An iPhone-a-like.

He says it’s called an Android and it’s better than an iPhone. Whatever. It’s a frickin’ phone. And I have never seen a man so attached to a frickin’ phone. In fact, I never thought I would see this man so attached to a frickin’ phone.

I mean, this is the man who once criticised me for checking my blog statistics during an episode of Boston Legal. In my defence, it was an episode from Season Four – the season where all the main characters contracted a bad case of the Ally McBeals and went all stupid. I think even Denny Crane’s wife would have done the same. If Denny Crane had a wife in Season Four. And that wife had a blog. And if, of course, that wife with a blog also had WiFi at home so she could check her blog stats on the computer in the loungeroom while watching Boston Legal. And if you can accept, too, that a character from the show could watch an episode of said show. And yes, this allusion has almost gotten as stupid as the fourth season of the show now so I should really just stop it here. UNLIKE THE MAKERS OF BOSTON LEGAL WHO WENT ON TO MAKE YET ANOTHER SEASON OF THE SHOW.

Anyway, so besotted is my husband with his new iPhone-a-like that he has taken to consulting it for everything – from breaking news and the latest weather, all the way to the app which tells him which foot he should next put forward when walking and that other app that advises whether he should let a fart out or not. All the while, he’s stroking that touch-screen with tender loving care…

I’m thoroughly expecting him to change its ring tone to Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving All My Love For You’ any day now.

All I can do, as a non-iPhone (or even non-iPhone-a-like) owner, is shake my head. Of course, if I did have an iPhone, I’d be swiping and pinching my own screen in a race to get the answer to whatever the question was first. That way I could show him that my iPhone shat on his iPhone-a-like from a great height. And yes, there’s apparently an iPhone app that helps you do that.

Anyway, the other day, we were driving somewhere new and we got a bit lost. Rather than pick up the street directory near his feet, my husband whipped out his Electronic Mistress and fired up google maps. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

NDM: So do I turn left or right here?

HUSBAND: Hang on… Just checking… Whoops, didn’t mean to do that.

NDM: The lights are going to change any moment. I’m going to have to make a decision. Left or right?

HUSBAND: (pinching and stroking and swooshing the crap out of his phone) Um… oh, shit…

Now I understand why most men keep their mistresses a secret from their wives. It’s because the wife might be tempted to throw the mistress out the window of a moving vehicle while doing a U-turn in heavy traffic to correct a mistake that MIGHT HAVE BEEN AVOIDED had the mistress been stroked and swooshed correctly by the so-called husband. I mean, if the man is going to keep us both, he’s going to have to treat us right. Sheesh.